King Ghidorah: Monster Zero - The Movie
Legendary Pictures/Warner Brothers Pictures/FUNimation Entertainment |rating = Not Rated |budget = $ 12,500,000 |gross = $120,000,000 $25,000,000 $174,000,000 $350,000,000 |runtime = 200 minutes |designs = }}''King Ghidorah: Monster Zero ''is the theatrical spinoff based on King Ghidorah: Monster Zero, ''directed by Kazuki Omori. Plot The film opens with a meteor landing on Earth, 65,000,000 years ago. The meteorite lands in Mexico, and it breaks out to awaken Cretaceous King Ghidorah, who proceeds to destroy the ecosystem and causes a massive meteor to crash into the planet, causing the K-T Extinction. Those that survive retreat underground, while, Cretaceous King Ghidorah ascends into space to continue to cause destruction across the universe. As the meteor lands, a Godzillasaurus roars in defiance. Travelling into outer space, Cretaceous King Ghidorah goes on a rampage for the next few millenia, as his legend grows across the universe, before meeting Keizer Ghidorah, his father, and DesGhidorah, his sister. Flash forward to 1964, and King Ghidorah, having matured into his adult form returns to Earth, under the auspices of the Gargoa race. Landing in Kurobe Valley, he destroys most of the Japanese countryside before reaching Moint Fuji. Meanwhile, Godzilla, Anguirus, and Rodan are fighting, while Mothra intervenes in their duel, and asks them for help in defeating King Ghidorah. However, only Anguirus agrees, while Godzilla and Rodan reject her offer. Anguirus and Mothra then launch a well-organized but ultimately futile attempt at fighting King Ghidorah. However, Godzilla and Rodan arrive to help, shifting the balance of power. King Ghidorah is eventually defeated and retreats into space, while the EDF destroys the Gargoa fleet. Three years later, King Ghidorah appears again, now under control of the Xillien race, attacks Earth again. This time, his Godzilla, Mothra, Anguirus, and Rodan have been brainwashed and are also serving as the Xillens' pawns. However, an Xillien traitor manages to get off a weakness of the invaders - high-pitched radio waves that can scramble their brains, and also break the mind control of the aliens. The EDF formulates a plan to attack the monsters with the A-Cycle Light Cannons, a battery of guns that can disrupt the mind control. An offensive is staged at Lake Miyojiin, the Xillien's base of operations, and after an extended struggle, the EDF is on the verge of victory. However, unexpectedly, Gigan, Megaguirus, and MechaGodzilla swoop in and attack the Earth monsters and rescue/re-brainwash King Ghidorah as new alien races, the Nebula Space Hunter M, Kilaaks, and Simians attack, having planned on attacking he Xilliens and taking King Ghidorah as their own. As the joint alien invasion rampage throughout the world, the EDF decide to send a shuttle to investigate a moonbase which had been cut off from Earth communications weeks before the attack. When the team arrives, they encounter a joint Nebulan-Kilaak-Simian garrison and defeat them. They also find the radio frequency of the ''kaiju mind control. The EDF decides on a new plan: lure King Ghidorah and the other monsters to the Adams Seamount, the largest undersea volcano on Earth, via a homing device tied to the monster's radio signals, where the where explosives have been placed. When the monsters reach the top, they fire he A-Cycle Cannons again, and break the mind control, and the explosives will be detonated, and kaiju will fall into the volcano, and another batch of explosive are to be detonated hopefully the monsters both inside. The plan is put into place, and King Ghidorah, Godzilla, and their respective allies converge at the volcano, engaging in a massive battle. During the battle, the A-Cycle Light Cannons are used again, so the kaiju are freed of their mind control and the accompanying alien armada is defeated. But they cannons are destroyed in the chaos, so Godzilla and the his allies duel with King Ghidorah and his other allies duel evenly, reaching the crater. The explosives fail to explode, unfortunately due to a stray bullet from MechaGodzilla's weapons and battle continues, until Godzilla and his allies lure all four alien kaiju at once. Hearing his enemy's roar, Godzilla wakes up and fires his atomic breath at the crater, detonating the explosives, and causing King Ghidorah and his allies to fall into the volcano. In a final show of defiance, King Ghidorah fires a final gravity beam into Godzilla at point blank range, and roars as they fall into the crater as it gets blocked up by debris. Godzilla then fires his spiral red atomic breath into the volcano and the four alien monsters are killed. Cast Quotes Production Development In early 2014, a few months into Master of Monsters' meteoric series run and unparalleled ratings, the fanbase began to cry out for a movie adaptation. Toho later announced that a movie adaptation had been greenlighted and set for release on 2015. The original plan was a stock footage recap movie, but Toho elected to not follow through with that as they thought that the fanbase would react negatively to it. Filming Much like the series, the film and the dub also utilized the use of emotion acting as supposed to standard voice acting styles. And also like the series, the animation (under TMS) was done after the voice recording sessions so that the actors wouldn't have to lip-synch with the animation. Most of the acting for the Japanese dub took place at Toho Studios' Studio Stage 9, where they had earlier done the voice work series and where Toho had filmed Terror of MechaGodzilla ''in 1975. Meanwhile, the English cast did their acting the spacious 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios in London. Post-production Editing the movie fell into the hands of Takeshi Seiyama and Paul Hirsch. Seyama edited ''Akira ''while Hirsch edited ''Star Wars ''and ''The Empire Strikes Back. '' Release The world premiere was held on May 31, 2015 at Toho's Roppongi Hills Cinema, decked out in a Godzilla-style motif with most of the crew and Japanese dub cast attending. Steven Speilberg, and George Lucas also attended. When the June 1 release date for the English dub arrived, the event was held in Odeon Leicester Square in London, to a red-carpet reception. Reception Box Office Critical response It holds an 65% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes. '' '' Other Media Novelization A novelization written by Kazuki Omori the shelves on the same day the Japanese dub was released. It has 316 pages. The book's story covers all of the trilogy and there are several story additions, such as the filling of backstories for the characters. Video Releases '''Criterion Collection' (2015) * Region: Region 1 * No. of discs: 1 * Video Type: Blu-ray * Language: Japanese, English * Format: Widescreen, NTSC, Color, Subtitled * Other Features: ** 2.20:1 aspect ratio ** 5.1 Stereo audio track for both dubs ** Audio commentary by the voice actors for the Ghidorah Empire of English and Japanese dub casts ** Audio commentary featuring the scriptwriters of both dubs ** Trio of Terror, a subtitled interview of Kōichi Yamadera, Minori Chihara, and Hideo Ishikawa where they discuss about the movie ** 90-minute documentary on the making of the movie, King's Gamble: The Making of King Ghidorah: Monster Zero' ** Heineken commercials made on-set ** Storyboard gallery ** Theatrical trailers and teaser trailers ** A booklet featuring a essays by Gareth Edwards and Tim Burton, an interview with Kazuki Omori by Stuart Gailbraith IV, interviews and liner notes by Reijiro Koroku and Shoji Yamashiro, and autographed storyboard sketches by Akira Toriyama ** Steven Speilberg's appreciation video ** The History of Anime on Film, ''a 74-minute documentary by Akira Toriyama and Katsushiro Ōtomo ** A 30-minute documentary on the making of the series, "The Birth of Terror" ** A 35-minute video piece reconstructing the movie using the film's original storyboards, called ''Storyboards of The King of Terror ** Video interview with the English dub voice actors Trivia *The trilogy features the best animation quality of the series. *The song that plays at the film's climax is Reijro Koroku's Godzilla Falls Into Mount Mihara, which was featured in The Return of Godzilla. *Several characters from the TV series are given bigger roles, others had theirs downgraded. Some don't even show up at all. *Due to the OVAs being released after the movie, the characters from the OVAs are not featured. *The film references all of the classic Showa movies King Ghidorah appeared in. *At 200 minutes long, it is the longest animated movie ever made. *With $350,000,000 dollars in the box office, it is the highest-grossing Japanese movie ever made, out-grossing Spirited Away. * A title card that was shown before the main credits reads "In honor of Tomoyuki Tanaka, Ishiro Honda, Ejii Tsuburaya, Akira Ifukube, Merrian C. Cooper, Edgar Wallace, Ray Harryhausen, and Willis O' Brien - the true masters of monsters." *The final battle is completely muted, with all sound removed save the soundtrack, until King Ghidorah deals the final blow. This is an Akira Kurosawa tribute, as Kurosawa had done the same thing for Ran (also released by Toho) during one scene which involved two armies setting fire to a castle while the all ambient sound is muted and the soundtrack is played over the scene. Category:Movies Category:Animes